Animals Pressbook
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© Closer Productions, Vico Films, Screen Australia, Adelaide Film Festival 2018 Starring LAURA HOLLIDAY GRAINGER TYLER ALIA SHAWKAT JIM FRA FEE MARTY DERMOT MURPHY JEAN AMY MOLLOY JULIAN KWAKU FORTUNE MAUREEN OLWEN FOUÉRÉ BILL PAT SHORTT Key Credits PRODUCERS SARAH BROCKLEHURST REBECCA SUMMERTON CORMAC FOX SOPHIE HYDE SCREENPLAY BY EMMA JANE UNSWORTH BASED ON A NOVEL BY EMMA JANE UNSWORTH DIRECTED BY SOPHIE HYDE DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY BRYAN MASON PRODUCTION DESIGNER LOUISE MATHEWS COSTUME DESIGNER RENATE HENSCHKE EDITOR BRYAN MASON COMPOSER JED PALMER & ZOË BARRY CASTING DIRECTOR SHAHEEN BAIG Technical Specifications RUNTIME 109 MINUTES COLOUR COLOUR ASPECT RATIO 2.35 SHOOTING FORMAT 3.2K CAMERA(S) ARRI ALEXA MINI LENSES PANAVISION P�VINTAGE SOUND STEREO LTRT & 5.1 LANGUAGE(S) ENGLISH 1 OVERVIEW One Liner A�er a decade of partying, Laura and Tyler’s friendship is strained when Laura falls in love. But what is really stopping her from fulfilling her dreams? Description Animals is an in�mate, A fierce and unapologe�c celebra�on of female friendship, funny and bi�ersweet examina�on of the challenges of turning talent into ac�on, and being a modern woman, with faults, longings and compe�ng desires. Short Synopsis Laura and Tyler have been flatmates and best friends for 10 years, marauding around the streets of Dublin, rejec�ng the expecta�ons that bombard modern women and ac�ng purely on desire. For Tyler, this is the best version of life, even with the inevitable hangovers, but when Laura's (younger) sister Jean gets pregnant… on purpose… Laura panics. Should she s�ll be partying into her mid-thir�es? And where has her supposed talent as an aspiring writer got her, apart from notebooks full of scribbles? In an inky-dark bar she meets rising-star pianist Jim, who falls for Laura’s wit and passionate a�tude to life, and the two soon become engaged. Inspired - or maybe in�midated - by teetotaler Jim’s commitment to his work, Laura knuckles down to finish the novel she’s been wri�ng for a decade. Tyler, however, is convinced that marriage is the wrong thing for Laura and that her literary success depends on a life of excess, adventure and - crucially - variety… star�ng with the devilishly handsome Marty. As Laura tries to balance these precarious pieces of her life, she only makes things worse. Can she really have it all? Or is her life of debauchery with Tyler ruining her a�empts to create something meaningful? As Laura struggles to come to grips with what it is that she really wants, she begins to realise that living a life for herself might mean leaving someone else behind. 2 Longer Synopsis Laura and Tyler have been flatmates for 10 years - best friends marauding around the streets of Dublin, rejec�ng the expecta�ons that bombard a modern woman. It’s about owning their bodies, indulging their desires and rejec�ng the conven�onal in favour of an enlightened life. By enlightened, of course, they mean drinking copiously – and all of the inevitable hangovers that follow - but the important thing is they do it all together. For Tyler, this is the best version of a life-lived-large, figh�ng against a patriarchal system. But when Laura's (younger) sister Jean gets pregnant… on purpose… Laura panics. Should she s�ll be partying into her mid-thir�es? Shouldn’t her talent have meant she has more to show for the last decade than 10 pages of a novel and notebooks full of scribbles? Then, in an inky-dark bar she meets rising-star concert pianist Jim, who falls for Laura’s wit and passionate a�tude to life. Inspired by Jim’s commitment to his work and in�midated by his talent, Laura knuckles down to finish her novel. She’s s�ll partying with Tyler, and dealing with the hangovers round at Jim’s. Truly, she can have it all! Laura and Jim - who is newly, unfathomably, teetotal - soon become engaged. A scandalised Tyler is convinced that marriage is the wrong thing for Laura and that her literary success depends on a life of excess, adventure and - crucially - variety… star�ng with the devilishly handsome Marty, a poetry scholar and self-professed “enabler”, to whom Laura finds herself irresis�bly drawn. As Laura tries to balance these precarious pieces of her life, she only makes things worse - Tyler thinks she’s selling out, Jim thinks she’s selling herself short, and Jean thinks it might be �me for the party to end. Can Laura really have it all? Or is her life of debauchery with Tyler ruining her a�empts to create something meaningful? As Laura struggles to come to grips with what it is that she really wants, she begins to realise that living a life for herself might mean leaving someone else behind. 3 , they brought to these roles and to our process of making, buoys the film and made STATEMENT FROM DIRECTOR my experience working with them s�mula�ng and sa�sfying. They both have excep�onal cra� and they brought to these roles a quality that is remarkable and SOPHIE HYDE refreshing. Tyler is a siren - “the bloodrush of temptation”– a call, and a desire for more. Tyler is horribly consistently caus�c, yet funny and admirable in her truth-telling; someone we’ve all wanted to be at some point, or just wanted to be around. Through Tyler we revel in the party, in the smarts of being an educated woman, in the freedom of being independent. But through Tyler we also recognize that feeling when someone you love is moving away from you, is moving on, falling for someone else and ul�mately, devasta�ngly, leaving you. “I liked the various smells of myself; For this film is also about a woman seeking a new adventure, a future life that fulfills on her poten�al. Her first answer is to look to conven�on, to see the answer I often sat with my head to one side, within marriage, a family, a team, like everything in the world has always taught her nose close to my armpit. I like the to do. And Jim, the man Laura falls for and is going to marry, is a tempta�on of another raw smells of other people, too; in kind. Firstly of pure desire - “Jim. I missed him in a physical way, like a thirst” - and particular scalps, ears, and the also a future self that she can see on the horizon, a possible life. But, is the woman he expects her to be, the one she wants to become? And is she willing to move insides of wristwatches” from one rela�onship to another? Ul�mately the film is about Laura discovering her own work ethic and crea�ve voice, realising that to achieve something in the world will take more than talent. - ANIMALS by Emma Jane Unsworth It’s a film about a 30-something woman confron�ng the idea that she might not follow the path expected of her, or the diametrically opposed path of rejec�on, but striking out on her own for the first �me in her life. Animals, the novel on which the film is based is accessible, funny, and The experience of being a woman, a unconven�onal, and it is grounded in a sense of untethered purpose brewing human-who-is-a-woman, is visceral. inside our central character. This tumult forms the grit of the film - a desire to live It feels like something, it smells like deeply and not succumb to conven�onal expecta�ons of us as women - but also something, and so does passion, and so does to acknowledge our desires for love, our ambi�on as creators and the failure. We are animalis�c, driven by things, but needs that arise from these. It is kine�c and raw; a rom-com about tempered by our culture, by the expecta�ons on us and by two female friends and a portrait of a desiring woman emerging the way we have learned to behave. When I first read Emma’s novel Animals I was from 10 years of partying, to search for her place in the world. struck by this visceral quality that felt familiar and strangely under examined. Emma’s book is an exquisite take on being a modern woman– a woman with faults and longings, a woman with a real-live body and with compe�ng desires. In adap�ng Animals to the screen, it was vital to me that this visceral quality of Emma’s wri�ng be translated – that the women feel like they have real bodies, that their desires are strong, that their animalis�c tendencies are headily presented, and that the compe��on between being animal and being in culture is part of the dynamic of the work. It was a delight to me that Emma was adap�ng her own novel and that she did it with fierce aplomb, a deep sense of collabora�on and a willingness to experiment with how to present the characters and world she created. She is a charming, talented and powerful woman, much like the characters she has put on screen. Animals is a story of self-discovery as told to us by Laura – 32, wi�y, charming, self-confessed lover of people-smells and white wine, of Yeats and MDMA, a notebook jo�ng, people-watching person, des�ned to succeed in her literary aspira�ons - except that 10-years into adulthood, she hasn’t.